Why Are Repairs So Expensive?

A fair question and one I get asked almost every day.

How can replacing a $2.00 part cost hundreds of dollars....

Do you give free quotes....

Unlike other repair industries the electronic and computerized faults that sometimes occur in high-end audio equipment are often not obvious and often without hours of bench testing an accurate prognosis cannot be given. Even more so with challenging intermittent fault problems.

Customers might as well ask me how much it would cost to cure intermittent Cancer. After a major blow-up many other components in the signal path are weakened and require immediate replacement also.

Tracing back this destructive domino effect is great fun and in most cases you simply do not know how extensive the damage is at first glance. Many times when you are inspecting the equipment and working on giving an estimation of repair costs to the customer you have already fixed the fault in the process. How are you going to quote on that after many hours invested already finding what is wrong with the equipment....

Today technicians at trade school are taught to isolate the fault into the most obvious area. Being, input circuit, output circuit, power supply or digital/computer controlled circuit. Any unthinking robot can be trained fairly basically to do this low brow level of work. This is the easy way with today's modular type construction of electronics and you simply replace that entire circuit board, defective channel or mechanism. This is all well and good when the equipment you are working on is less than 3 years old and OEM parts through the appropriate manufacturer are still available. Quotations on parts and labour are easily calculated and the job can be completed and the customer is happy.

Not so when you are presented with older equipment where factory support is lacking and/or OEM parts are not available. In cases like these you need an A1 Level Technician that is qualified to work down to an individual component level and replace or repair the unit with substitute or equivalent parts. This level of expertise is significantly higher than your normal repair centre type work and as such so are the costs of repair significantly higher to compensate for such specialized work.

It is for the reasons above that we do not give fixed quotes on complicated repairs that we choose to accept. Only estimations on the likely total cost outcome can be given at the time of acceptance and if complications are experienced during the course of the operation the customer is notified of the situation. People are not computers. We have a panel of technicians that we use to do a wide assortment of repair work. Different technicians are more specialized in one area of electronics than another. For example I would not give a laser replacement or complicated up-grade re-capping rebuild to one of our technicians who is more experienced in mechanical motor rebuilding and repair.

Every man has their limitations and this does not mean that either is better or less qualified at their trade. It is experience that ultimately carries the most weight in this world and I as an employer place very little value in fancy certificates of those that I am considering using as a suitable repairer for my business. At he opposite end of the totem pole I know a qualified Electronic Engineer who cannot even set-up a TIVO and this unit was made for the biggest Nuff Nuff out there to be able to self install and use. Experience counts more than academic achievement.